At the Root
by ManofManyHats
Summary: Azula holds onto sanity by hairs. Literally. They break every time, and she pulls again and again and again; and no one ever offers her anything stronger.


_Written for the Pro-bending Circuit | Round Three_

 _Task:_ Write a story about a character (or characters) battling an addiction, and the reaction and consequence of someone else finding out.  
[Level 3 Addiction: Eating something inedible (eg. sand, plastic, chalk, paper, hair)]

 _Team: Laogai Lion Vultures_

 _Position:_ Earthbender

 _Prompts:_  
Easy: (word) gruesome  
Medium: (location) Ember Island  
Hard: (quote) "It is hard to understand addiction unless you have experienced it." - Ken Hensley

 _Bonus:_ Use of element

 _Word Count:_ 953

* * *

"You have such beautiful hair, Azula," her mother says as she runs the brush over her daughter's dark locks.

It is one of the simpler days, a trip to Ember Island, and her mother has bathed her and dressed her after a dip in the beach. She watches her mother brush her hair in the mirror, face serene and hands gentle, and Azula thinks her words quite true.

Azula is porcelain skin, golden eyes that flash like treasured coins and black hair that runs over her shoulders like spilt ink. Her beauty, her strength, is something stone, and it will not break easily.

Everything is easier at Ember Island, when her mother's voice is still sweet, her brother doesn't scowl when she comes his way, and her father's expectations are still light on her shoulders.

But Ember Island crumbles away like the sand along its beach. Azula is not like that; she is strong and steady and beautiful. Her hair is beautiful — they always say so — and it is hers, and she can do whatever she wants with it.

She doesn't remember the first time she runs her fingers through her hair and gives a tentative pull at the roots. The lock comes out so easily, calming almost, like mindlessly pulling out a blade of grass. She rolls it in her fingers, wonders how such feeble strands make up something so beautiful, and then reaches up and picks another, until a patch is bare. And then, tentatively, mindlessly, the blade of grass is gritted between her teeth. It is cut into manageable, controllable, pieces and slides down her throat without trouble.

It's starts as a curiosity. Then, as her mother pushes farther and farther away from her — her hands less gentle, her voice more sharp — it becomes habit. When her mother disappears, her brother soon to follow, and it is just her and her father's expectant eyes, it morphs into obsession.

(It's not an _addiction,_ she assures herself, even though no one dares to ask. She does it because she wishes to, and she can stop whenever she wants, just like how she can stop pining over her father's praise whenever she pleases. Neither stops. Only because she doesn't want them to, of course.)

The insane pull their hair out in handfuls and the distressed have it falling out like snow; yet no one dares think her distressed. Or _insane_. Azula is strong, like stone, and she will crush you if you tread too close.

Zuko is sure that he will never understand his sister. When they meet on Ember Island again, he finds the years spent apart unbridgeable. When they smooth their minds out on the beach and sit quietly for a moment in the firelight, he does not fail to notice Azula's hand running across her scalp. Neither do Mai or Ty Lee, though they have been around too long to think it worrisome. There are more pressing things to worry about when dealing with the princess.

Zuko finds it gruesome. Even so, it does not hurt him and it does not hurt her, and telling her to stop would definitely lead to her hurting him; so he says nothing about it.

It has been that way since they were children, though then it had been so much less. Before, she hid it, as if it were a stain to her perfection. Now, short spikes of reaped hair stand as if part of her perfection, like a grisly crown.

Why it starts is lost on them, all of them, even in part her. They are not sure they want to know. It is hard to understand addiction unless you have experienced it yourself, and morbid behaviours have convoluted roots.

It is a rebellion against a mother who never loved her, the destruction of something she found beautiful. It is a nervous habit, alike to biting your fingernails. It is a sense of control in a world she so desperately tries to manipulate, yet spirals against her will. And it is all layered under a mindlessness that allows her to go on without sparing a thought about any reason _why_.

(It doesn't matter. Azula is beautiful — strong — and it doesn't matter.)

All she feels is the euphoric pinch when a lock is picked, the mindless calm as her teeth cut it into pieces, the sting when she runs her hand across her head as the points of young hair poke out, trying to grow in the desolation.

It fills the hours as she tried to devise a scheme to enter Ba Sing Se. It is there for her to get lost in whenever her father comes with biting words. It distracts her mind when she starts to remember — Mother, Zuko, her friends who betrayed her, simple Ember Island days — and turns memories into a dull hum. The night her father leaves her in the palace to become Firelord, the moon rises and falls, and she does not sleep.

On the day of her coronation, Azula is still beautiful, but her hair does not conform.

It is matted and tangled, rough and dry, grisly crown poking out at the top, and there is no attendant or sweet mother figure to fix it. She stands before the mirror and takes up a pair of scissors. The blade shears her bangs in a haphazard angle, her eyes underneath just as crazed. Azula is strong as stone; she is not faulty or feeble like the dark locks that lie on the floor.

Azula is beautiful. And her mother is in the mirror with something mournful in her eyes.

"What a shame," she says. "You always had such beautiful hair."


End file.
